


Pommel of Ivory

by nimrodcracker



Series: The Bluffs of Bonestrewn Crest [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, College of Winterhold - Freeform, Experimental? Format, Gen, Origin Story, Suicide Attempt, Vigilantism, Vigilants of Stendarr - Freeform, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:28:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24572320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimrodcracker/pseuds/nimrodcracker
Summary: I once knew an Aurelia Elisbeth Marcisio.She didn't live past that day.
Series: The Bluffs of Bonestrewn Crest [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1776070
Kudos: 1





	Pommel of Ivory

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this circa 2012-2013 when i was first starting out as a writer, and also when i was in a very rough patch... so yes. my god, you can cut with the edge in this. plus, some themes i would address differently (etc). who i was then, who i am now - interesting to see the difference. 
> 
> always planned to re-write this, but it's already 2020 and i'm working full-time. i doubt i have the energy/time to revisit this properly - same goes for the rest of my unpublished material (and it's a LOT). One day perhaps... for now, i'll preserve it as is. 
> 
> Enjoy!

_Fredas_

_3rd of Heartfire_

_4E 196_

I once knew an Aurelia Elisbeth Marcisio.

She didn't live past that day.

+++

I remember the inferno.

The acrid taste of burnt wood, mingled with the dampness of the night;

When the cottage crumbled in the licking flames, my life fell apart too.

These blackened, charred remnants in the morning light, 

The lifeless husks of the family I once knew. 

I remember the fangs.

Cruel, tipped razors tearing into pliant, exposed flesh.

The unnatural ivory, so striking in the darkness.

Something so pure, wielded by the un-living.

This time, I didn't, no. _Couldn't_ laugh at the sheer irony.

Not when I was smothered by the thick smog of despair, the slimy tar a wretched film that could never be scrubbed off.

+

I'll never forget how my brother died.

Every hitch and whimper drove another splinter into the recesses of my already shattered self.

Oh, but that was the calm before the storm.

Another gash, (smash)

Another swipe,

His tear-stained cheeks, now painted crimson with what used to be his larynx.

And then, there was silence.

Garbled pleading that ceased with the finality of shattered glass, like those strewn all over the floor of this broken home.

He was the last.

+

I remember the piercing orbs.

Clouded by the intoxicating haze of bloodlust.

A devilish, bloody smirk framing a pallid, unmarred face.

Such child-like innocence amidst the chaotic riposte.

I remember the stranglehold.

Cold, bony fingers digging into my throat.

Its breath, a cloyingly sweet tang of viscera,

Inspiring loathing that suffused me, clinging on like a ratty, heavy coat. 

+

I yearned for an end, and that sickened me.

The girl I knew abhorred giving up- the spurning of a priceless gift, reminiscent of a casual fling of rocks into the sea.

But now, a single snap, and the endless seas would embrace me,

into the depths of hitherto; Oblivion. Aetherius, anything. 

Anywhere but here.

At least, then, I wouldn't be alone.

Its searing gaze held mine, and for the second time, I was merely a stalk in the wind, subservient to the whims of nature.

I couldn't look away. 

+

The tightening death-grip, 

The stifling heat, 

The coiling fear in my gut.

'Twas enough to sustain the delusion of my incoming end. 

But no.

Left slumped against the wall, in a battered, broken heap on the blood-spattered floorboards.

The fires raged on, sating their never-ending thirst on the remaining vestiges of the life I used to live. 

Through the maelstrom, I swore I saw blood-stained lips turn upward in a smile, at odds with the surreal approach of dawn.

That face would haunt my dreams as long as I still drew breath.

They found me with my brother cradled in my arms.

Flecks of dirt and dust adorning my simple cloth shirt and tattered breeches;

A tragic figure against the grotesque tapestry of destruction.

That was the last time my tears fell.

+

I still hear the screaming.

These tendrils reach deep into the rotten core.

With bloodstained palms and blue-black arms,

I kept telling myself, it couldn't hurt me anymore.

I knew the searing fury,

The torrent of vehemence eating away the tatters of my humanity. 

In that anger, I found solace, purpose.

But I was only one woman against a threat I couldn't fully comprehend.

Whatever that was mustered, crushed in a moment of sobering clarity.

I soon found a place,

Where emptiness was the only variable.

The innumerable faces and their countless gestures, such meaning lost on me.

Caught in the mind-numbing crawl, was I even capable?

One thing irked me.

I didn't understand,

Weren't we all born to die? 

+

I remember the castle on the cliff.

A finality, before the faceless whisked me away.

They thought I missed the masked pity, the smothered exasperation in their gazes.

They thought I could be okay. 

But they simply didn't know.

Of the cacophony in my mind,

Voices and screams and whimpers that tormented my fragile mind in the hours after dark.

Telling me I wasn't good enough, it was my fault, I wasn't worth being alive.

I wanted silence, and I tried so hard.

My body, littered with inky blemishes and red, raw lines etched in fury and desperation.

The criss-crossed scars, the sketch of the damned.

Both, a testament to the _need_ I felt, the visceral fear of another night in my realm of desolation.

I had it planned - a few steps off the tallest tower, a knife across my jugular.

I wasn't supposed to fail.

+

I failed to feel the tingling at first,

Standing so close to the precipice.

That ever-growing tidal wave,

Warmth that seeped into my bones, latent magicka reserves mingling with the electrifying atmosphere of the College. 

I felt something then, one reminiscent of warm beds and a roaring hearth, her soothing presence and bubbling, tender elk stew - the flood of memories screwing my feet against the stone floor.

Prickling which soon combusted into twin fireballs of heat, enveloping stiff fingers buffeted by the cold. 

I gazed blankly into the flickering flames off the tips of my fingers, caught in a moment of stupor.

One borne of recollections long buried in the depths, flashing before my very eyes like the overwhelming darkness of a blindfold.

In the time when the noble's daughter still lived, time long suspended in torpor.

I had forgotten how much I missed it all, the safety, the promises, the kinship. 

I realised then, that door was never closed to me.

I didn't know how long I spent on the roof, letting the wind whistle in my ears, soft caresses on my weathered face.

Letting the tension in my frame unwind, sinking into the pits of my being.

Drawing the thin blue fabric of my cloak tighter to myself, I headed back into the College, droopy shoulders raised higher than mere moments ago.

Leaving behind the decay that had long tainted my soul for the past year.

And a nocked dagger, left forgotten in the snow blanketing the ledge.

Pommel of ivory, blade of steel.

+

They called me Elisbeth, for 'twas what I was.

Aurelia died with her family, in the burning manor house by the lake. 

It had been three years,

Stinging anguish reduced to a dull ache.

Mastering fire was catharsis,

Never again will it be allowed to forcibly take.

Nobody noticed the renewed vigor beneath the surface, 

For they were the chinks of an armor that I couldn't afford to break. 

At that moment, I knew my purpose.

Stendarr's horn hanging near the base of my neck.

Raining death and destruction to the ones that destroyed her.

Never again will they be allowed to terrorize unchecked.

They say desperation empowers the weary.

They weren't too far off. 

+

I remember the Eye of Magnus,

The eye of the hurricane.

Dragging me into a linear path I couldn't escape from.

It killed a mentor and a friend,

like it was just another game.

Only to be named Arch-Mage,

A title forged in blood.

+

Just a _mentor?_

_A mentor, treasured._

_A friend and a confidante, dear to her heart._

_Words that ring hollow, for a feeling resisting definition._

_Love defies language._

+

I remember what he told me.

On a cloudless night devoid of the biting chill.

The Hall of the Vigilant, mercilessly scythed through like timber of the trees.

Those words callously delivered, and my whole world stood still.

And I ran, ran faster than I ever knew.

+

No.

No.

No.

No.

_No!_

The old ghouls reared their ugly heads, slimy hands grabbing, clawing, seizing, anything, everyth-

+

_Fire,_

_Forked tongues swallowing the manor whole._

_Light,_

_Illuminating the crystalline liquid of the lake, the rolling hills, the craggy mountain bluffs._

_Ash and dust._

_Fire and flames._

_Screams, dull thumps, tearing fabric… and flesh._

_A throaty chuckle, distinct in the chaos._

+

Keeper Carcette.

Arms pulling me into an embrace,

Tear tracks sliding into blue cloth, dust staining white cloth.

Gentle, hushed murmurs; persistent, yet kind.

Missing.

_Dead_.

Old Father Tobias.

Twinkling eyes, simple sincerity.

A proffered hand in the dark,

A hand grudgingly accepted.

_Dead_.

Salts-in-Marshes.

Extra hunks of elk in a standard bowl of stew, always.

Questioning gazes eventually liberated an answer.

He told me I needed it.

_Dead_.

Neria, the fiery one.

A hand-carved dagger left on my bedside.

Pommel of ivory, blade of steel.

A note tucked under its slender form.

_You can't kill a necromancer with a glare alone_ , it said.

_Dead_.

No.

No.

No.

No.

_No!_

Bodies littering the snow, 

Burning heaps of crumbling timber.

The Hall, mighty in life, brought down low,

Shadows of a manor house flickering in the flames of the harsh, bitter night.

Pale-skinned corpses, with fangs peeking out under blood-red lips, joining the ensemble of the fallen.

+

I knew the searing fury,

The torrent of vehemence eating away the tatters of my humanity. 

In that anger, I found solace, purpose.

I was only one woman, against a threat I couldn't fully comprehend.

But this time, I wasn't a daughter of a noble, so helpless and naive.

+

There was never a shortage of abominations to incinerate. 

Cave after cave,

Keep after keep.

Time held no more meaning to me.

The blood on my hands, the ash on my robes.

The only things that I could see.

Amidst keening pain and crimson-tinted frenzy that demanded retribution.

Vengeance, or Justice?

+

Every slain brother, 

Every slain sister,

Their amulets I'd take,

Dull, bronze trinkets I held dear.

A reminder of what I stood for.

+

Foolish.

A tenet, disregarded.

A price I then had to pay.

Complacency rewarded me with a trap.

A horde of vampires, no longer isolated, no longer disorganised.

They were expecting me.

All I could see in their eyes, was my impending demise.

It wasn't pretty.

The crackle of magic in the air, filling the cavern with the bitter tang of ozone.

A marriage of the elements - a maelstrom of utter, indiscriminate destruction.

Carnage that soon dulled into a chaotic monotone.

Exhaustion had long seeped into my bones.

My skin, a tapestry of burns and gaping wounds, covered by ripped and singed cloth.

I lay in a pool of stickiness, propped against a rock, surrounded by remnants of the horde.

Sticky, brackish blood as thick as a broth. 

Its origins, a mere triviality in my current disorientation.

One induced by the creeping tendrils of death, out to claim a soul long overdue.

I was so tired. 

One last vampire, hobbling on stumps, its harsh wheezing a contrast against the deathly silence of the aftermath.

_Thunk, thunk, thunk._

It barely registered, at first.

The fog was surely clogging up my consciousness.

Light glinted off the blade it held, blood dripping off its sullied surface.

Pommel of ivory, smeared black and red.

Then, it struck me.

The stark finality of it, with a clarity that shook me to the very core, akin to being doused in ice-cold water.

I was going to die.

Fitting, for one who never wanted to live.

It missed once, but it wouldn't miss forever.

_Thunk, thunk, thunk._

Fangs bared in a sneer,

eyes betraying everything - contempt, anger, loathing.

Arms raised in a mocking salute, derision borne of triumph.

Its rasped words, sufficient conclusion for my story in the realm of the living. 

I was powerless, in every sense of the word.

A pathetic, feeble attempt to raise my arms, met with crushing resistance of exhaustion,

A response to its raised dagger, set on a course straight for my jugular.

Black spots had long started dancing in my vision, my sight reduced to mere pinpricks of light.

My eyelids soon fell shut for the last time, weighted down by the sheer weariness of my soul.

Were they even open before?

I only knew the cold embrace of inky blackness that I had so desperately yearned for.

On my deathbed, I couldn't ignore it.

The whistling of the wind, reverberating with insistent clarity.

A clarion call of biting cold that I had learned to love.

_Cold and brutal._

_Harsh and frigid._

_Just like the Skyrim winter._

'twas a constant reminder that I could still feel, a comfort on the nights I spent alone, vulnerable and laid bare to my thoughts.

_Thwack_.

It never came, that supposed deathblow.

All I knew was the feel of warm hands.

The touch of the living on my forehead, tenderly brushing away the flyaway strands from my forehead.

Strands caked in the perverse masterpiece of filth and gore.

Hands ghosting over the marred flesh on my bones.

A smooth baritone, uttering words that simply washed over me, like the pitter-patter of rain on the windows of a manor by the lake.

Was I supposed to know this manor?

Strong arms gripped me, hauling me up into the air.

One thought remained, when I finally let go of the precipice, too tired to hold on.

I didn't die alone.

Cracked lips unconsciously turned up in a smile, an expression long absent from the harsh lines of a weathered, ashen face.


End file.
